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Icelandic - countdown to pillaging

  Tags: Icelandic | Travel
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
33 messages over 5 pages: 13 4 5  Next >>
tristano
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 4050 days ago

905 posts - 1262 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 9 of 33
10 February 2015 at 6:31pm | IP Logged 
Good luck man!

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5959 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 10 of 33
10 February 2015 at 10:33pm | IP Logged 
daegga wrote:
Save yourself some agony and approach Icelandic the Old Norse way. Reading sagas is fun,
reading about sími, tölva, sjónvarp and the like is not. The curse of modern
civilization.
http://www.snerpa.is/net/isl/isl.htm has the sagas of Icelanders in modern
spelling. Better for extensive reading than anything modern.
http://www.sagadb.org/ has some of those too + in pdf/epub format. And with
English translation --> nice for making parallel texts.
...
:)


Thanks daegga, what a neat resource, but I am far too soft a creature of the 21st century to embrace the hardier times of the 12th.   Plus I need audio, desperately, at this stage of my learning.   More importantly, I am busy writing my own saga (the Saga of Spanky the Anonymous) through the mere fact of living through the day-to-day incidents of my own heroic life, and I want to avoid interference from (and possible adverse comparison to) the older and more established Icelandic saga material.

P.S. - if I had really wanted to save myself some agony as referenced in your post, I would have stayed the heck away from Icelandic. I was running through Italian like a hot spoon through spumoni until our pending summer travel plans diverted from Italy to Iceland.

Edited by Spanky on 10 February 2015 at 10:35pm

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5959 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 11 of 33
10 February 2015 at 10:42pm | IP Logged 
redflag wrote:
Good for you, Icelandic is at the top of my "one day" list.   Glossika has a Icelandic
package I know already released which might be good if it suits your preferred way of
learning.

Good luck!


Thanks redflag! It seems really cool to this very early point in my poking around at it.

I had come across reference to the Glossika material but had put it aside for further consideration, and until after I can access some sample audio first.

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5959 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 12 of 33
10 February 2015 at 10:49pm | IP Logged 
dmaddock1 wrote:
Spanky wrote:
At a minimum, I hope to come close in being able to correctly pronounce Icelandic place names while there.


Good luck! When I was there many Islanders laughed at my attempts (in a good-natured way).

Totally random: Will you be there on Canada Day handing out flag pins? I met a Canadian doing just that at a swimming pool on my trip. (Speaking of, don't miss a chance to go to one.)

In case you haven't seen it, check out these Michel Thomas-like lessons for English speakers.


Thanks dmaddock! I recall coming across an article talking about Icelander's good-natured amusement at foreigner's inability to get the place names down correctly, and also a few fun pieces on Western media's wild stabs at pronouncing volcano names - I'll post when I come across them again.

Definitely hitting some of the swimming pools and other natural water opportunities (I have a picture of the blue lagoon up as my screen saver for motivation!), with or without flag pins (probably without - pinning opportunities in a pool being a challenging endeavour at best!).

Thanks very much for the reference to the Alaric Hall "Michel Thomas" style material. It is awesome, and I am busy working through the first few short units now.


Edited by Spanky on 11 February 2015 at 6:16pm

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5959 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 13 of 33
10 February 2015 at 10:55pm | IP Logged 
tristano wrote:
Good luck man!


Thanks tristano! I have a feeling I am going to need all the luck I can get...!!
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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5959 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 14 of 33
12 February 2015 at 3:57am | IP Logged 
Spanky wrote:
I recall coming across an article talking about Icelander's good-
natured amusement at foreigner's inability to get the place names down correctly, and
also a few fun pieces on Western media's wild stabs at pronouncing volcano names -
I'll post when I come across them again.



The real danger with Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano that was active in 2010,
was apparently linguistic in nature.

Eyjafjallajökull - blog
article


youtube clip of mishmash
pronunciation


Edited by Spanky on 12 February 2015 at 3:58am

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5959 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 15 of 33
12 February 2015 at 7:46am | IP Logged 
Pronunciation remains a challenge for me, so I started by trying to focus on materials
which have both audio and matching written components. I worked through a number of
Youtube videos - especially helpful was the expert village series of 30 or so
thematically-organized clips in which phrases are repeated twice, the second time more
slowly and clearly, with captioning of the target phrase in Icelandic.

youtube
- expert village series

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Spanky
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5959 days ago

1021 posts - 1714 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 16 of 33
14 February 2015 at 1:40am | IP Logged 
I've started up with mumbling elementary Icelandic to myself on the walk and bus ride to/from work, to either the amusement or the concern of other humans who also live in this part of the planet. Icelandic seems to draw more startled looks than French, Spanish, German or Italian ever did.

Bus chat with myself this morning:

Spanky1: Sæll, hvað heitir þú?
Spanky2: Ég heiti Spanky.
Spanky1: Spanky, er hægt að læra íslensku?
Spanky2: Nei, Spanky, það er ekki hægt.

Which might possibly roughly mean:

Spanky1: Hello, what is your name?
Spanky2: My name is Spanky.
Spanky1: Spanky, is (it) possible to learn Icelandic?
Spanky2: No, Spanky, it is not possible.


(I would have gone on to add:   "well, it may be possible, but you will need to study quite a bit harder than you have been if you are going to pull it off, mate" but I did not have all the words handy for that.)


Edited by Spanky on 14 February 2015 at 1:57am



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